Week 12- 3 MONTHS OLD! and Hands (Across America)

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Week 12 was pretty awesome, if I do say so myself!

Tummy time continued to go quite well!You continued to fall in love with your hands, and discover them anew every morning (Oh my gosh! Are those my hands? Wait, wait, wait! Can I suck on these? These are awesome!)

and you continued to hold our hands too...and try to suck on those as well!


And we got to meet some world-weary travelers. Your Great Uncle Zev and Cousin Johanna were driving cross country from Virginia to California and made a special stop in Dallas just to meet you! And you guys were fast friends!




They were so happy to meet you and hold you! How cool is that?

And, since we're totally new at this, we didn't think to start this earlier, but we are going to take a picture of you once a month in the same chair, in the same outfit to see your growth!

Here's the pose from Thursday:
Why did we start this on Thursday, your might ask... well.. it's because you turned THREE MONTHS OLD!

We can't believe it either! We don't remember life before you buddy, and these three months have been challenging, uplifting, incredible, touching and...a bit smelly. We would trade it for the world!

We can't believe you've grown from this at zero months:


To this at one month:

To this at two months:
To this fine young man who, at three months, can hold his head up and smile and giggle and say things like 'agha'!


and kick...


and reach...

and grow and grow and grow!


Happy 3 Month-iversary, Aidan!

Week 11: ceiling fans, exercises and close friends

Week 11 was a pretty monumental week for you.

• First of all, you made a new friend: the ceiling fan
  

You would spend good chunks of your days staring up at any ceiling fan in the house, smiling and laughing and flirting with the ceiling fan. I was almost even jealous of the ceiling fan, because you were such a fan! But, then I realized that I'm slightly better looking, and I can get just as good smiles and giggles with a rousing round of "He's got the whole world in his hands" or "Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes"

• You definitely found your hands

You also spent a good chunk of this week touching your face, rubbing your face, putting your whole fist, your wrist and sometimes just a good finger in your mouth! So, let's give you a hand...for finding your hands!

• Baby Exercises!

Your Mom discovered that you really like doing "baby sit ups!" It's where you lie on your back, we hold on to your arms count 1....2 ... 3!!!!!!! and roll you up to a sitting position. You LOVE baby sit ups. How can we tell? Well, it's quite easy to tell! The judges (below) give that sit up a "10!"
We took that show on the road, and did more baby exercise outside!

• We discovered that even though you don't know the words to "Uptown Girl," but you still seem to really like the song (just like your Mommy!)

• You and Preston have a very special relationship.

He makes you giggle, we swear!

• As seen above, you look really good in hats:

• The whole family had a really fun time playing outside with you

But, our outside party, just like week 11 of your life, came to an end all too fast.

But the good news is that you had Mommy and Daddy (and Preston) to clean you up last week, and that we've moved on to bigger and better things: namely, week 12 (which we're already in the middle of, and it's going swimmingly!)

How you got here!

Well, buddy, you are 11 weeks old now, and it's high time you saw the whole truth about how you got here. Well maybe not that whole truth...but I mean the nine month journey of how you grew from a few cells big to our big baby boy!

During our pregnancy with you your Mom and I took a picture of her belly from week 8 all the way to week 39... the last picture we took was on the Friday night that your Mom was having contractions with you! We were running around trying to get everything ready to roll to go to the hospital, and we had the peace of mind to grab one final belly shot before you made your debut!

I finally finished putting this animation together. Here's the bare bones version:


And Here's the cinematic piece de resistance!

So, sit back and relax and watch how you grew from a belly to a baby, condensed down into 16 seconds! (The video's a bit too big to fit here on our tiny blog, so I recommend double clicking on it again and viewing it in its big time full size glory on you tube!)




It's hard to believe that you were even ever inside your Mommy. 11 weeks later and pregnancy seems like a distant memory for your Mom and Me. She misses being pregnant, she says, but having you here with is by far the much cooler, more exciting and incredible adventure!

So, no matter where you go in life, you can look at this video and see how grew! You'll know that for 9 months it was just the two of you, your Mommy and you! But now that you're out here for good, we are a family! I can't wait for the times when the "Two of us" can do all those fun things the Beatles sings about, but I also love every minute of it being the three of us, or the five of us, if you count the mutts.

(And..don't forget...one day you'll hopefully have a sibling or two too!)

We love you and we can't imagine our home or our lives without you. It's hard to remember a time when "the two of us" was just your Mom and Me. And though those times were fun, we wouldn't trade you for the world, young man!

Top Ten of Week 10...

Early on when we brought you home waaaay back in the first week of your life I said the following odd and frighteningly curious thing in my sleep, as reported by your Mom: "And now for the Top Ten things about being a parent: Number 1: The Dingos!"

Okay, for the record, I don't want to feed you to the dingos, and I actually can quite easily list the top ten things about being your parent for each and every day!

But, for symmetry's sake, I will list the top ten things about week 10 of your life, as seen by me. And there won't be a dingo in sight. But there will be a puppy or two.

# 10. Mother's Day!

Sunday was your mother's FIRST mother's day! How cool is that?

You and I printed out a this picture of you and her and put it in a very nice frame that a little birdy told me that she really liked. And it was true! She really liked it!We also got her something pretty cool: Remember that sand dollar necklace I was telling you about? Well, we took the necklace back to our jeweler friends Gabriel and Becky and had an amethyst, your birth stone placed in the sand dollar pendant!

(The cool thing is that, as with a natural sand dollar, there are 5 holes in it...spaces for five stones maybe? or three stones plus a garnet and an opal? Who knows!)

But, the necklace was finally ready yesterday, so we picked it up, and it looks very pretty!

Mother's Day was a lot of fun: we celebrated with your Mommy, your Mimi, your Nanneh and your Great Grandma! Unfortunately, we were having so much fun that we didn't think to take very many pictures, so you'll have to use your imagination. But, it was a lot of fun for you, I think: all the mommies and grandmommies and great grandmommies, plus Aunt Sham and Great Aunt Nessa, were fawning over you all day long!


#9. S-M-R-T!

You are getting to quite a little clever little boy. This week we've seen some major accomplishments in the world of grasping, as seen below!
And you're kicking your little legs like crazy too! Your mommy was telling me that it's a sign of development that you're not just kicking both your legs at the same time anymore...you're starting to do the bicycle: kicking your legs alternatively.

This makes it quite difficult to be one of your socks, as evidenced below:

#8. Your smiling face!

Your smiles and laughs just keep getting better and better.
#7. Mimicking!

To date you are getting very reliably good at sticking your tongue out at your mother and me when we stick our tongues out at you! This is called mimicking, and also a sign of a very smart 10 week old! (either that or you are part lizard!)

Good news too: by the pointiness and length of your tongue, I think you inherited my tongue!
7. Adorable yawns that lead to...
6. Adorable naps with Toby!

5. or Adorable Naps with Daddy!



4. or LONG night's sleep in your crib!

I know there are no pictures of it, but that's because we're not crazy enough to try to take pictures of you while you're sleeping in your crib! But, let's just say that week 10 was a very successful week for you sleeping in your big boy crib for extended periods of time.

For most of the week you actually slept upwards of 8 hours and only woke up once in the night for milk. Usually we'd feed you around 10 and you'd sleep til 5, or 5:30.


This is incredible! Please, please, please keep it up!

2. Long walks around the neighborhood

Part of being a big boy for you has been your acclimation to the car seat. At first, you hated that thing. But over the last couple of weeks, we've noted that you really have take a liking to it. You can sleep in that thing for long after we've gotten out of the car. And we don't need a bilbo to make it happen either!

(picture taken by your Godmother!)

But, the best part about you being able to sleep in the car seat besides no panic-ridden car rides and ability to eat a meal in a restaurant without having to take you out too often is this:

We can take long walks around the neighborhood again! We just plop you down in your car seat, plop your car seat in the stroller, saddle up the dogs and take long walks. We've done this twice now and you've seemed to enjoy them both! You smile at the sky and look at all the trees and eventually, normally by the time we take the right off our street, you zonk out and sleep the rest of the way.

We love walks, and so do Toby and Preston and, believe me, they need them...they were both getting a little soft around the middle!
#1. Facing Outward!

We've really noticed one huge big mega change this week: you no longer prefer to be held over our shoulders: you want to see the world and be held facing outward! Sometimes you fall asleep in this position, but mostly, you seem to like to take it all in.



You're an attentive little guy, and as such, my shoulder isn't really the most interesting thing you like to see!


So you face outward, and we'll continue to look upward and forward to all the fun that week 11 will (and has already started) to bring!

Week 9: A Week in Pictures

Your friend Brooks' dad has this to say about how quickly all this baby stuff seems to go by: "the days are long, the weeks are short."

It's so true! I look back on the 9th week of your life and it felt like it zipped by, though it was filled with many firsts, set backs, cutenesses and victories!

On Saturday morning - aka party day- you put on your finest duds. But, we soon realized that these khaki shorts were already too small on you, and you hadn't even worn them yet! They were marked 'premie' and were a hand-me-down from somewhere. But you rocked them for the moment you wore them!

So it's not that you were all dressed up with nowhere to go. You were dressed up AND we had somewhere to go. First party of the day: you, me and your Mom went to your Auntie M's and Uncle Jeremy's Wedding Shower up at Blue Mesa Grill (which just so happens to be where your Uncle Jeremy and my first jobs were in High School). You had a lot of fun. I had a lot of food. You chilled in your car seat for a while, but then you had to get out, so I Moby wrapped you and that's where you chilled for the rest of the shower...and for my 3 trips to the buffet!

Then, after a brief trip home and some planning with Nanneh for the main event later on (see below), we went deep into Richardson to help your friend Brooks celebrate his first birthday! You and I creeped into one of Brooks' mommy's photographs and put on our best party faces. I hope that at your one year party you have at least half as much fun as Brooks did at his!

Then it was time for the main event. Since Auntie M's sister was in town, that weekend was jam packed with Shields wedding stuff. Saturday evening was Michelle's bachelorette party, Jeremy's bachelor party and...your first sleep over! You, Preston and Toby spent the night at your Nanneh's and Baba's house and you did really well. In fact, your Mom and I were probably more stressed about it then you were. You had a blast hanging out with them...but, I must say, for only weighing about 11 pounds, you have quite the set of acoutrements that go with you if you need to spend the night somewhere: a freezer pack of frozen milk, bottles, bottle sanitizer, pack and play with bassinet, clothes, pajamas (back ups on both (and back ups on those)), the vibrating blue chair , diapers, butt cream, wipes, burp cloths and blankets! You'd almost need a sherpa to help get all that stuff over to Nanneh's house. But you've got a Daddy, so no Sherpa needed!

You did really well at Nanneh's and your Mom and I came to get you the next morning. Then we went to stroll around the Cottonwood art Festival with Aunt Sham and Scott. You liked art..or at least the bright colors. But it was hot as blue-blazes out there, and holding while it's hot means that daddy sweated through his shirt. This summer's going to be a hot one. I may start wearing mesh. Or just keep a clean shirt in your diaper bag.

But, seems that taknig you out of your element, well, took you out of your element. Sunday night was pretty much a disaster. We thought we were smart and didn't re-set up the bassinet/pack-n-play, in which you've been sleeping (right by our bed) for a long time. You'd been sleeping so well in the cradle that we didn't even want to tempt ourselves by setting the pack-n-play back up. But Sunday night was kinda miserable for everyone. You were fussy and really anti-being-horizontal. You would sleep perfectly well on someone's shoulder...but lay you down and you started screaming like crazy! So, no one got much sleep on Sunday.

But, day by day you got better and better, and after every storm there is a rainbow.

See, after a storm Monday night, a real rainbow actually came out (and a metaphorical one).

We bathed you (which you were happy with):And dried you (which you also seemed happy with (and you also grabbed my beard):

And you slept pretty well! It took a few days to get your rhthym back, but by the end of the week, you performed an amazing sleeping accomplishment!

But first, I need to tell you about a downer. You seemed to be in pain a lot this week. You were grabbing for your ears and slobbering everywhere and chewing on my shoulder and pretty much uncomfortable for a good part of the time. At first we were worried it was an ear infection (it wasn't) or a reaction to the infant tylenol we gave you last thursday (it wasn't). It turns out that you're exhibiting all the signs of teething! This process can begin months before you even pop your first tooth, so hang in there buddy, it's happening. Here's the email your Mom sent me when she made the discovery:

"Here are some symptoms of teething :

• Drooling
• Chin or face rash
• a little cough
• biting (his fist or our arm)
• Pain
• irritability
• refusal to feed (crying at the boob, which he did this morning!)
• Diarrhea (I don't know the difference.)
• lo-grade fever
• wakefulness!!!!
• Ear pulling
• cheek rubbing
• Gum hematoma (i haven't noticed this)"

So, in sum, you're teething. And if that list of symptoms is indicative, then I may be teething too, because I've been exhibiting quite a few of those as well.

Despite the teething, you have a lot to smile about still. In fact, you smile at me! Regularly and cutely! The morning is your favorite time of day and the best time to get some good smiles rocking. Yesterday when I was working from home, I was able to capture a whole series of your incredible smile! You've also perfected what we call "moon-eyes," when your bottom eyelid goes straight and the top one arches over. It's really adorable. Heart-meltingly adorable.

You even brought those cute smiles to Daddy's office on Wednesday for lunch! You and your Mom surprised me with a lunch visit. It was so nice to see both of you...and made those lonely days at sea a little shorter!

But, of course, the biggest accomplishment of week 9 happened last night: you spent the night in your big boy crib! All by your self!

I put you to bed about 10:00 and held your hand and the pacifier and sang to you until you fell asleep at 10:20. And you slept in the crib until 3:30! That's awesome! 5 hours!

Then your Mom fed you and you slept in the crib from 4:15 to about 6:30!

And then you leaked out your diaper all over the crib...

but don't worry, we have a washing machine and have already washed all the crib stuff to try to recreate this amazing event again tonight.

You can't outsmart us that easily, little buddy. After all, we've been parents for a whole 9 weeks!